Lovely hike up Robinson/Ainsley Canyon on this cool, showery day. Light rain most of the way up, but it felt refreshing. Parked at the gate with the green dot map. I should've taken a picture of the map, as I've done in the past, as I find the WTA directions confusing, and the paths/roads never seem to match up with the description. Or maybe it's just me. There was one other car parked here, and a horse trailer beyond the gate.
Walked west up the path past the boulders and deer skeletons and after about a third of a mile swung left (south) to cross Robinson Creek. Note: There's an earlier crossing - skip that one and keep going a little bit farther till you come to a well-used path with a makeshift bridge of logs. Shortly after crossing and slightly up the hill we came to a fork. Last time we hiked this we took the left hand path, so decided to try something new and headed west on the slightly larger path. Within a quarter mile or so the path forked again and this time we took the left hand path.
Wound slowly up the canyon, stopping every minute or so to snap pictures of the densely carpeted embankments and hills ablaze with flowers of every color imaginable. Indian paintbrush (red and orange), chocolate tips, death camas, Lewis's lomatium, motherwort, smallflower woodland star, and of course mule ears were in all their glory, en masse across the meadows. Silvery lupines glistened with raindrops while rufous-sided towhees and red-breasted nuthatches slurred and beeped all around. Absolutely gorgeously tranquil.
After about a mile of climbing the canyon widened and we entered a beautiful aspen grove with clusters of bright mountain arnica and bigleaf lupine blanketing the floor. This was an especially gorgeous section of the trail, with aspen on the left standing in fields of thick and bright almost dayglo green grass with a little stream running through, and swaths of blooming yellow antelope brush covering the hill on the right.
More flowers! Maiden blue eyed mary, larkspur, ballhead waterleaf, blue flax, madwort! Saskatoon serviceberry was in full bloom all around and spring pea, false solomon's seal, western stoneseed and wild hyacinth kept us company all the way to the eventual big wide open meadow with a treat on the hill - the mysterious little stone hut I'd read about and which has somehow eluded us on all our previous hikes up here.
We crossed the meadow to have lunch at the hut, then afterwards, unable to follow the track any longer (it disappears into a cluster of felled tree limbs), we backtracked a little and headed up the hill beside the hut on what at first appeared to be a trail but was in fact a track made by a 4 wheeler. It had horribly gouged out the side of the hill, and we couldn't understand why anyone would do this until after another 75 feet when we came upon a proper road at the top of the hill. Short cut (sigh).
Wanting at this point to head back, we went left (east) and after about a half mile or so started to recognize the distant hills and rock formations from a prior hike up here. We were now pretty sure we were on the right track (neither of our online gps maps was working very well) and after another 3/4ths of a mile we came to a path off the main road that veered straight down a steep embankment toward a meadow that I recognized. I knew that we could either keep following the main path or take this steep path and they would eventually converge. We took the steep path down through the wide meadow. A little beyond a camp of some sort we came upon more pretty aspen stands and just at this point, the sun came out, treating us to lovely views north toward Mt.Stuart through the aspens. Shortly after we came to the three way fork on the main path not far from the trailhead. We followed the road headed downhill (north) and made it back to the trailhead by 5 pm. 4 miles in 3 1/2 easygoing hours.
Perfect hike and day.
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